Trying to cheat the Sunday Times, eh?

The Sunday Times Literary Supplement is holding a contest in association with Faber & Faber to put 10,000 pounds worth of literature in the hands of a clever librarian who knows the answer to obscure and pedantic literary questions like:

"Who would have liked to arrive on a donkey to pick strawberries?"



And:

"Which novel opens with seasick passengers singing for a showbiz evangelist?"

And:

"Which Victorian science teacher had a see-through stomach?"

In fact, you have probably arrived on this page searching for the answers to one of those questions. I can't help you. I only read porn, and sometimes I read books by dead American alcoholics.

If your book shelves are not clotted with mildewed armfuls of contemporary British literature from the past fifty years, these questions are going to furrow your brow and make your molars feel too large for your face. You will feel stupid, illiterate, and unhip -- as if you have never read a book in your life, and you have arrived at your college final exam drunk, naked, and foreign. Your brain will begin to pulsate and churn, even as a few of the answers to these questions drift at the very edge of your consciousness like balloons on the ceiling at a child's birthday party. These balloons will only piss you off more.

You will also need to know what your favorite literary icons looked like when they were small British children. Hint:



The prize is pretty good, though. Ten thousand pounds in books is a lot of books. That's worth double here in America, right? You can probably sell them all for fifteen grand if you are sharp.

You need to have a UK address to win, but New York probably counts.

"Ah, yes -- London," says Dr. Future. "The sixth borough."

Comment!

Posted by miracle on Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:56:07 -0400 -- permanent link